The roots of the Tour de France's visit to England this summer probably lie in a chance encounter in the spring of 1966. An obscure French professional cyclist, in his first season, is sitting on a seat in the sunshine pinning on his race number. The current world champion, an Englishman, sits beside him as they wait for the race to start. In accented French he fires out questions calculated to put the nervous novice at his ease: Who are you? What are you called? What have you won?

Thirty-five years later the Tour de France organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc - our youthful obscurity - was still overwhelmed by the charisma of the then world champion, Tommy Simpson. The encounter remained fresh in his mind: he still could not believe that a rider of Simpson's stature could take notice of a nonentity such as he, Leblanc, then was.

Leblanc's partiality for English cycling and English cyclists started then and continues to this day. He will be there in London on July 7-8, burly, genial and perhaps a little less lined in the face than of late because in 2005 he retired as organiser of the world's greatest bike race after 16 years.

The Tour's visit to London may seem like an anachronism for an event which is quintessentially French and has never been won by a cyclist from this country. Cyclists in England, after all, run red lights and get in the way of cars. Whatever the recent success of our track cycling team at the Olympics, Britain cannot be described as a heartland of the sport.

That may be true but it is to ignore the fact that in the 70 years since two British cyclists, Bill Burl and Charles Holland, became the first Britanniques to start the great race, a rich heritage has accrued, reflected in Leblanc's experiences since his meeting with Simpson.

He rode his first Tour, 1968, with the last Great Britain team to ride the event; never a star, he remembers sharing the last place in the bunch with John Clarey, who finished in Paris as lanterne rouge, last man in the pack.

As a journalist with the newspaper L'Equipe, Leblanc was a rare English speaker and he moonlighted for an English cycling magazine. He was a big fan of the talented Mancunian Graham Jones, who reminded him of Simpson with his chequered Peugeot jersey and his roman nose.

"Mon favori" he still calls Jones, who works on the Tour for Radio Five Live. He looked on as Robert Millar challenged for the King of the Mountains prize in the 1984 race and admired the Scot's colossal talent, even if he found him the devil to interview.

With a confirmed Anglophile at the helm, it was no surprise that as soon as the Channel Tunnel made it practicable for the Tour to visit England, Leblanc brought the race over, making the decision three years after being appointed organiser in 1989. An earlier visit, to Plymouth in 1974, had been blighted by delays at Exeter airport as the riders transferred back to France. The experiment was not popular and made the organisers aware that the travel had to be impeccably organised.

The Channel Tunnel was not actually open to the public when the riders and cars piled into the shuttle wagons - in many cases after a lengthy wait, because the tunnel still had teething problems - for the two stages of Le Tour en Angleterre in 1994. And here it was legitimate to ask the question: would the public turn out?

By then, 57 years after Burl and Holland had boarded the Golden Arrow to head for Paris, the Tour had its place in the national consciousness. The process had been slow, however. Simpson made headlines in the 1960s but for the wrong reasons, dying in tragic and controversial circumstances having overdosed on amphetamines. The sprinter Barry Hoban won eight Tour stages in the 1960s and 1970s but complained bitterly that no one in his native land knew who he was, even though he was a popular figure in Ghent.

The broadsheets began to look across the Channel in the late 1970s but the breakthrough was the inception of a new television channel with a brief to think outside the broadcasting box. With Millar and the Irish stars Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche as the points d'appui, Channel Four began showing nightly highlights in 1986 and remains synonymous with the Tour in many minds, even though it has long given up the race, initially in favour of cricket.

To set the seal on Le Tour en Angleterre, a British hero appeared in the form of Chris Boardman, who had come from nowhere to wear the yellow jersey a few days earlier, although unfortunately he was relieved of it a few hours before crossing the Channel. The scenes were unforgettable: a swath of southern England transformed for the day into a passable replica of La France profonde, with an entire population taking the day off work to set up camping chairs and roadside barbecues as the show travelled past.

And having seen two million people on the roadsides of Hampshire, Kent and Sussex, Leblanc declared he would bring his Tour back as soon as was practicable. He has been as good as his word. All it needs now is for Bradley Wiggins or David Millar to emulate Boardman but this time to carry le maillot jaune into Kent.

· William Fotheringham is the author of Roule Britannia, a history of Britons in the Tour de France (Yellow Jersey Press, £7.99)

Britain and the Tour70 years of entente cordiale

1937 Charles Holland and Bill Burl are the first Britons to start the race. Neither man finishes

1955 Great Britain fields its first team in the Tour. Two men finish: Brian Robinson and Tony Hoar

1957 Robinson is the first Briton to win a stage, taking stage seven from Saint Brieuc to Brest

1962 Tom Simpson is first Briton to wear the yellow jersey, albeit for a single day. He finishes sixth overall; the second highest British finisher to date

1974 The race visits Plymouth for a brief circuit stage won by the Dutchman Henk Poppe

1975 Barry Hoban, a sprinter, wins the eighth stage of his career. No Briton has come near him

1983 Robert Millar of Scotland wins the mountain stage from Pau to Luchon

1984 Millar finishes fourth overall and takes the King of the Mountains jersey. Both remain British bests

1994 Chris Boardman wins the prologue time-trial and wears the yellow jersey for three days. Two million people line the roads to see the Dover-Brighton and Portsmouth-Portsmouth stages of Le Tour en Angleterre

2000 David Millar becomes the fourth Briton to wear the yellow jersey after winning the prologue time-trial at Futuroscope